“A bloody close encounter!”

Alien abduction. It’s not something you hear a great deal about these days. Perhaps because after decades of thinking that all aliens wanted to do was muck about in remote cornfields like a bunch of insane extra-terrestrial Tony Harts, we just don’t think they’re scary any more. So we just don’t hear from abductees claiming to have been wrapped in clingfilm and treated like a human toffee apple.

Back in 2005 though, things were different and those evil aliens managed to get their own film, courtesy of director Jake West. And from the moment a man is anally raped by a giant drill in unflinching close-up in the opening scenes, to the climactic “death by combine harvester” massacre, it’s pretty clear that these are visitors from outer space even Professor Brian Cox wouldn’t be that interested in meeting.

Jake West’s Evil Aliens (which is genuinely its full title) is very much a product of its time. Gross-out comedy abounds, one of the female leads is the once-omnipresent Emily Booth, and very little thought has been given to any kind of coherence. It was pretty much made for the kind of “lad’s mag” satellite channel that just doesn’t exist anymore.

Emily Booth is Michelle Foxx, a TV presenter in a low-cut top on the kind of  low-budget satellite TV channel that doesn’t exist anymore. She presents a programme about alien sightings. Given an ultimatum about the overall quality of the show, she begs for one last chance – there has been what appears to be a genuine sighting on an island off Wales. She travels there with a cameraman, soundman, actors and nerdy UFO expert™ to interview the only survivor of the bum-drilling scene from the beginning of the film, who is now pregnant with a Jake West evil alien baby.

There then ensues a stupid, gore-strewn battle between the humans and Jake West’s evil aliens, who are still hanging around for some reason. Then the Jake West evil alien mother ship turns up, meaning there’s now an army of Jake West’s evil aliens running amok on the island. Luckily, there’s also a surfeit of Jake West evil alien-killing equipment lying about, ranging from intermittently operational chainsaws to highly effective shotguns, and the aforementioned combine harvester.

Will anyone escape alive from the menace of Jake West’s evil aliens? Will the first victim give birth to a Jake West evil alien? Will Jake West’s Evil Aliens get that Oscar it richly deserves?

About the time this film came out, this reviewer was watching offerings from Hammer and Amicus and bemoaning the fact that “they don’t make ‘em like that any more”. These days the same could be said for films like Jake West’s Evil Aliens. A time capsule from a simpler, stupider age, perhaps the best that can be said of it is that it’s a reminder of how much we’ve grown in the intervening years.